It is interesting to note that the large area to the left and the small area to the right in the ENT image does conform somewhat to where extra image area would be if the 35mm film from "Ménage à Troi" wasn't hard matted in-camera.

Perhaps director Rob Legato (one of TNG's VFX Supervisors) decided that for his episode he wasn't going to hard-matte the image in-camera.

But if that is the case -- why did they also have to crop the top and bottom of the image for ENT?

Another possibility was that this practice of hard-matting in-camera was inconsistent during TNG's run and simply resulted in a stroke of good luck for this particular shot being used in ENT?

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Because even with the extra material on the side 35mm still is not 16x9 widescreen. The only way to have TNG in 16x9 is to crop the top and bottom. Using the extra material on the side just means you don't have to crop off as much. Although that extra material might not always be useable. There could be mikes, exposed frames, or any number of other problems with the extra information which was ignored since they weren't using it for the 4x3 TV screen.

Of course, realistically if TNG ever gets remastered it will be 4x3 just like TOS-R is 4x3. The real challenge with TNG is having to redo every edit and FX shot since it was all done on video and not film.

DumbDumb2007 said:
I caught a few first season eps on dvd eariler this week. They beyond need remastering. the whole first season looks low budget and just above a Saturday morning live action show.

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It's amazing if you compare the first two seasons with 3 and on. The production value is totally different, including the set lighting.

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As someone who is not a TNG fan, I'm always amazed by how the softer fuzzier look of TNG in later years is looked upon as an improvement by most folks. I do agree that there is a certain rough aspect to the first couple years, but that gave it a bit of bite. Once they started diffusing stuff when they switched cameramen, it started looking like a lot of typical TV where it is all about making the actors and actresses resistant to aging, a kind of subtle version of Finnerman's fog up the actress look on seasons1/2 of TOS.

There is a comfortable slickness to this gauzy stuff, but it is just so safe looking, kind of like TMP but w/o the lit from the floor awfulness.

The visual effects do look better, probably because the motion control folks got a lot better with practice.

The amount of work involved in digging out all the original film elements and rescanning them would be something that kept a lot of people employed, so I guess remastering these could be a good thing from that perspective, but the cost would be staggering.

To the best of my knowledge, there are very few elements in ANY of TNG that originated on video.

There is a shot (a bad one as I recall) of people getting zapped in season 2 in the deaf mediator episode that utilized shot-on-video elements of a visible-human model or something like that, which has been mentioned in interviews here or there, but nealry everything else was shot on film. I think shooting physical elements on 35mm continued even into 1st season ENTERPRISE, at least for dirt and rocks, even if they went full cg for the ships.

TNG is still remembered by most of my Gen, it’s what most of my generation watched even if they did not become big enough fans to pay attention to the sequel shows.

I'm starting to think that most people of my gen who watched TNG, later moved on to other sci-fi and don't really care about Trek anymore. Most of the Trek fans left are old timers so I don't know if there are enough people left who care about TNG to want it "remasterd."

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Just personally this didnt apply to me.

I'm 25 so as for me in this gen

As far as sequels, I watched Ds9 and liked it, I never finished voy. Left like 2nd season.

I never liked Sci Fi I liked Star Trek, and therefore never ever moved on to any other sci fi. So not everyone is all im saying.

It would be nice to see my fav st look nice. Maybe i will buy it one day,

It is interesting to note that the large area to the left and the small area to the right in the ENT image does conform somewhat to where extra image area would be if the 35mm film from "Ménage à Troi" wasn't hard matted in-camera.

Perhaps director Rob Legato (one of TNG's VFX Supervisors) decided that for his episode he wasn't going to hard-matte the image in-camera.

But if that is the case -- why did they also have to crop the top and bottom of the image for ENT?

Another possibility was that this practice of hard-matting in-camera was inconsistent during TNG's run and simply resulted in a stroke of good luck for this particular shot being used in ENT?

Click to expand...

It was an occasional practice to shoot shots requiring later optical work in VistaVision on TNG, that way there'd be extra image on 'either side' so that an electronic pan&scan type move could be introduced into an otherwise static shot. Rob Legato started doing this on LAST OUTPOST (panning off Riker to show some dry ice and model mountains, I think), and used it plenty of other times as well.

It is cheaper than motion control, and this technique has even been used on feature films such as THE SIXTH DAY, as a way to get movement into a static camera setup requiring visual trickery.

The original 35mm negatives were telecined (transfered to video for editing) and stored for later use.

There is no picture information on either side of the originally exposed frame due to hard matting in-camera.
(which is why they had to crop the image for the trailer.)

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If the above is true, it means the 35mm negatives do exist somewhere in storage at Paramount or CBS. These can be transfered to HD in exactly the same process that was done for TOS Remastered: That is, 4:3 pillarboxed within the 16:9 HD frame.

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I would think that Paramount without any doubt has the original negatives from TNG somewhere. And I am also excited, because there's without any question a huge opportunity for Paramount to go back and give us the quality from the original 35mm negs. I almost don't really even care about the FX, really. (Although I think the quality between a fresh scan from a 35mm neg and the look from the video-transferred space shots would be significant.) Just by your sample alone, I think that the difference seen on virtually any kind of screen (high def is the preferred choice for sure) would be startling.

You know, the problem here is that in order to re-do TOS they simply make new versions of certain shots, of exactly the same length as the originals, and insert them into digital video of an episode that's been through the whole post-production process.

That is, all the footage and sound effects and elements were completely assembled into an episode decades ago.

TNG's raw film footage was transferred to video before postproduction. It was assembled into episodes on video.

Basically, to recreate a TNG episode means to do all the post-shooting work again. To use the original soundtrack means to match every shot precisely from the original version to the new version.

Even if all the raw film footage exists, it's probably only doable at all if every bit of editing was documented and all that documentation exists in useable form. It would be a daunting and expensive task to do one or two episodes, much less 178.

Starship Polaris said:
Even if all the raw film footage exists, it's probably only doable at all if every bit of editing was documented and all that documentation exists in useable form. It would be a daunting and expensive task to do one or two episodes, much less 178.

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Ya good point. I could see them maybe doing it to a couple of two parter episodes and selling them as standalone movies (like maybe BOBW and All Good Things etc...) and maybe a top 10 "Fan Collective" set or something that the fans get to vote on but I think the cost would be just to great to do all the episodes.

Starship Polaris said:
Even if all the raw film footage exists, it's probably only doable at all if every bit of editing was documented and all that documentation exists in useable form. It would be a daunting and expensive task to do one or two episodes, much less 178.

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Ya good point. I could see them maybe doing it to a couple of two parter episodes and selling them as standalone movies (like maybe BOBW and All Good Things etc...) and maybe a top 10 "Fan Collective" set or something that the fans get to vote on but I think the cost would be just to great to do all the episodes.

I guess with more and more HD channels popping up it is only a matter of time until many old series are converted to HD. I bet it is cheaper than shooting completly new stuff in HD to fill the time on the channel.

I know this is an old thread, but I want to put in my opinion. They are making a mistake, remastering in 4:3 aspect ratio.

If they are going to remaster TNG, then they need to do it right. This means, keeping the original 35mm aspect ratio, and NOT do 4:3 aspect. They messed up, remastering the TOS series in 4:3, when they should have shown the full 35mm frame.

The original 35mm film before special effects, probably exists in storage. This original film is NOT in 4:3. Yes, it may have props, lighting, or other stuff in the frame on the sides. But this kind of stuff can be erased and fixed with VFX software.

I would like to see them fix the scale mistakes...when they showed a TOS movie ship (like the Oberth class) next to the 1701-D, and the ships were very close in size, where in reality, the 1701-D should DWARF TOS movie ships. Same for the Klingon BOP's.

To me, my mind just compensated and just perceived the 1701-D as smaller than it was supposed to be. (It did the same with those much bigger windows...my mind saw them a TOS-sized, and made the ship look smaller than it was to me.) I never go a real sense of the Galaxy class' scale. That ship is HUGE, and I never really got that sense. I got a better sense of BIG scale seeing the TMP ships on the big screen, because we got some stately, magestic close-ups.

Of course, all those re-used Space stations and Spacedocks from the TOS movies didn't help either. I never liked how we were supposed to buy that Starfleet (and the Klingons) just built scaled up monster versions of exactly the same ships and stations. BS. Maybe some of those could be replaced with new designs - and maybe the reused maybe the Spacedock doors could be made bigger, or we could see a different. Bigger, mushroom dock, or just see the 1701-D dock on the outside as they were originally gonna do...

Dude, you don't get it. All the TNG fx shots were done on video tape at 640x480 resolution. All the compositing done combing fx and film shots were done on video tape also. TNG can't be released in HD without redoing all those shots.

As well as new special effects, and the film remastered to high def, I would also love (and I'm dreaming, now) if they scrapped the synthesised music from seasons 1 and 2, and just replaced it with selected orchestral music from the latter seasons. I think it would make the episodes seem so much better.

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I was with you until that bit. Don't change the music - it's part of the atmosphere of the episodes as much as Edward Brown's lighting. I much prefer some of those Ron Jones scores to the later bland Chattaway durges.

dustoffxl said:
The original 35mm film before special effects, probably exists in storage. This original film is NOT in 4:3. Yes, it may have props, lighting, or other stuff in the frame on the sides. But this kind of stuff can be erased and fixed with VFX software.

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The trouble is, that's just making more work for yourself, most of which wouldn't be seen due to overscan.

Starship Polaris said:
You know, the problem here is that in order to re-do TOS they simply make new versions of certain shots, of exactly the same length as the originals, and insert them into digital video of an episode that's been through the whole post-production process.

That is, all the footage and sound effects and elements were completely assembled into an episode decades ago.

TNG's raw film footage was transferred to video before postproduction. It was assembled into episodes on video.

Basically, to recreate a TNG episode means to do all the post-shooting work again. To use the original soundtrack means to match every shot precisely from the original version to the new version.

Even if all the raw film footage exists, it's probably only doable at all if every bit of editing was documented and all that documentation exists in useable form. It would be a daunting and expensive task to do one or two episodes, much less 178.

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The folks at World Events Productions had this done for the DVD releases of Voltron: Defender of the Universe, so it might be economically viable for ST:TNG. Only the bean counters know for certain.

The thing is, if they are going to go back to original negs, they might as well do a complete Lucas-style revamp - including new effects, restoring scenes cut for time, etc. That way there wouldn't be the same pressing need to match every scene frame-for-frame.

I'm sure most of you are incandescent with rage at such a prospect, but it's a serious consideration.